2016/12/28

From Modernity to After-Modernity (31)

The
alternatives, that are shaping in the present as potential futures, are
not readily visible and so the substance of the future remains
invisible to the naked eye for the majority of citizens. But it is
nevertheless accessible to inquiring minds. To detect these alternatives
in their very early stage, I mean at the early stage of their formation
as potentialities in the present, one has to entrust the subconscious
by entering states of altered consciousness. It is indeed only after
they have already emerged as selected future alternatives that conscious
observation will possibly detect them. The fact of the matter is that
the substance of these alternatives is being formatted inside the
context that is shaping in the present which means that, while this
context has still not been substantiated yet, future alternatives are
already forming in the midst of the presently forming context. This
whole process remains largely hidden to conscious observation and its
visibility will only arise with its substantiation.

In summary
the potentiality of the future is contained in the context that is
taking shape in the present. But only the augmented perception, gained
by the minds of those who dare to confront their conscious with their
subconscious and vice-versa, opens their consciousness to these
alternatives that are starting to shape in the present context as the
potential future. In practical terms this implies 3 things for the human
condition:

not being a given the shaping of the future is open to the intervention of humanity.
The alternative potential future outcomes are given by the balancing
act between the determinant factors that are shaping and interrelating
in the context forming in the present. What this implies is that very
small forces have the potential to exercise a determinant impact on the
outcome of this balancing process. This is the butterfly effect that was
detected by quantum physics. In practical terms this means that human
dreams and ideals, about how the future should ideally unfold, have the
power to strengthen humanity’s collective will which procures it the
potential weight to successfully act as a lever on the formation of the
future. It is indeed this newly gained strength, shaped by our dreams
about an ideal future, that has the potential to gain a multiplying
effect on human behavior in the present context by letting humanity add
the very small weight of its actions to the alternatives of its liking
within the balancing act of the selection process that will result as
the substantiation of the future.

the wisest, among those whose perception is augmented, eventually gain the knowledge of the systemic working of the universe.
What this means is that they have attained the wisdom to see the
selection process between competing alternatives, as it unfolds in the
present, and how it is shaping the substance of the future. This is what
in philosophic Taoism is called “seeing the Tao in action” or what in Buddhism is called “Pure Consciousness”, or what I personally prefer to call “seeing with the eyes of the universe”. This is also the substance that Xieyi painting strives to catch1. The rare individuals who gained the knowledge of the systemic working of the universe, in tribal non power societies, were the “master-men of knowledge”, later called Flame-Sovereigns in the territory of today’s China. The specific context of China, during the emergence of agriculture, allowed these “master men of knowledge” or Flame-Sovereigns2to unify the animist culture over an expanding territory the result of which waslater inherited by theChinese empire.
In contrast following the agricultural revolution the special
geographical context of the TriContinentalArea, or Middle-East, imposed
an immediate restructuring of tribal governance under the aegis of power
which consecrated the dominance of the men of power over the men of
knowledge since the early days of the transition from agriculture to
empire3. With the emergence of the Chinese empire the knowledge and gifts of the “master men of knowledge”,
who had earlier unified cultures over expanding territories during the
transition from tribal societies, were inherited by some rare “master-scholars”4.
Their knowledge was codified by their followers and these codes
supplied the Chinese with the necessary add-ons to adapt animism to the
new context of empire which lasted until its demise in 1911. Such wise
individuals have always been extremely rare and unfortunately in
Late-Modernity, for reasons already mentioned, they have completely
vanished from the societal scene. Historically the wisemen were the men
of knowledge of their societies and their role was to share their
holistic narratives about the working of reality with their fellow
citizens.As mentioned before this was done for two reasons – first
to decrease the anxiety and suffering the individuals were experiencing
when faced with the unknown, in other words, the target of the worldview
was to increase their levels of happiness – secondly, and perhaps more
importantly, to increase societal cohesion in order to smooth societal
reproduction and thus facilitate the perpetuation of the species. The
survival and perpetuation of the species was always the paramount
concern of the men of knowledge. Unfortunately during the early years of
High-Modernity philosophic rationalism and science definitively
separated the trinity that substantiates the exercise of such a wisdom –
knowledge, – worldviews, – arts5.
And so Modern societies have since erred from an initial bout of
irrational exuberance during High-Modernity to confusion and then to
more confusion. Maximum confusion was finally reached in Late-Modernity when human minds, transfixed by material possessions and technological gadgets, lost any concern for reality or the survival and perpetuation of the species. You
can observe this in the way some scientists have started to rationalize
the technological singularity without any sensible opposition arising
to counter them. But such a rationalization can safely be said to be the
surrender of humanity to the reign of “machine artificial intelligence”
(MAI). What is even more baffling is that this surrender is presented
as the natural evolution towards greater progress that promises to
supply a better future for humanity. Such a future created by machines,
equipped with artificial intelligence, is thought by scientists and
futurists as being in humanity’s best interest. But... nobody can hide
that MAI is nevertheless feared even inside the scientific community.
The technological singularity means indeed that humanity is going to be
unable to understand the complexity generated by MAI and nobody will
thus have the means to know what is the finality MAI will align on. If
this finality is rationality for the sake of rationality, as is today’s
scientific credo, then the probability that humanity will be sacrificed
on the altar of rationality is very high indeed. This acceptance that
humanity should abdicate its own will to the will of machines can not be
understood otherwise than being an act of willful ignorance about the
systemic nature of the principle of life. In my eyes the ignoranceby scientists of the systemic nature of the principle of life can only be construed as a betrayal of life6.
Where is morality in all of this? We already heard that reality does
not matter. Are we now going to hear that morality too does not matter?

considering that the wisemen, who are conscious about the working of the universe, know the potential outcomes of the selection process that will substantiate the future;
one would think that societies might want to listen to them so as to
maximize their chances to attain the best future alternative for the
species. But, while having been extremely successful at churning out material stuff by among other separating the trinity “knowledge-worldview-art”, Modernity also eliminated the wisemen from its midst and so it definitively blew its chances at harmonizing its actions with the systemic reality of our universe. The profound truth at the heart of this observation is that the reasoned abdication of life, by science, in favor of the machines will inevitably give way tothe cleansing,by our universe’s systemic reality, of the product of this irresponsible mechanical mess-up of life’s systemic complexity7.

A few inescapable conclusions

The
most pressing question of our time, I feel, relates to the distinction
between scientific knowings and knowledge in the sense of a worldview
that can possibly be shared by all. The fact of the matter is that to
make sense out of the contemporary transition from Modernity to
After-Modernity we need to be able to distinguish the grain from the
chaff within the brouhaha that assails us daily. From the get go we
observe the following:

science emerged out of a context
dominated by the ideologies of rationalism and materialism that are
rooted further in the ideologies of individualism and the reason of
capital which themselves are rooted in the ideology of power. What I
mean to say here is that, in the end, science finds the resources to
sustain its substance in the abstract principles founding the reason at
work within capital. And this, in turn, explains how the mechanical
reasoning that supports technology succeeded to impose itself as the
dominant form of human activities in Late-Modernity.Scientists are
paid to work on projects financed by big capital holders or their
agents. This is why they accept to collaborate in the conception and
execution of the technological visions of capital. In other words to
satisfy the economic needs of their families scientists, most often
unconsciously, agree to let their minds be trapped in a system of
reasoning that is nevertheless alien to them. Such a system of reasoning
eventually goes counter to the systemic reality of our universe, and
against the systemic reality of the principle of life, and so it
eventually becomes a moral burden in the minds of scientists; something
Einstein and Oppenheimer, for example, illustrated with their
declarations opposing the use of nuclear weapons. But the fact of the
matter is that scientists, consciously or unconsciously, participate in
setting in motion pathogenic practices that are threatening the health
of their societies, of their fellow citizens, and of the human species.While
this is generally occurring unconsciously there is no escaping the fact
that their responsibility is on the line for messing with the systemic
complexity of the principle of life that is encoded in the application
running on the operating system of our universe. Being one of the
applications installed on the operating system of the universe we must
realize that the tweaking of this application within the context of the
sub-set earth, at the hands of a mechanical rationality, is bound to end
tragically for the principle of life. And this leads me to think that
the responsibility of scientists in this process is unmistakably going
to reverberate, far in the future, on how humanity shall remember about
their activities. Scientists should thus not be astonished when
observing that more and more people are coming under the impression that
science and technology is a threat to them. And naturally the
perception of being threatened stresses people out. There is only a
small step from such a perception to come to despise scientists as being
“elitist pricks” that can’t be trusted8.

by
imposing itself, to the world as a whole, Western Modernity is
potentially blowing up humanity’s spiritual capacity to handle the
perpetuation of its own species into the future. What I mean by this is
that human actions have strewn so far already out of the bounds of the
systemic reality of the principle of life that the fate of humanity is
perhaps already sealed. The possibility is very real indeed that we can
no longer do anything else than to observe how nature cleanses the mess
left over by the hubris of an adolescent and arrogant human species.

What to do?

I’m
a realist, and as I stated here above, I consider that the future is
not a given. But I recognize that, even if we knew with total certainty
that the future outcome for the human species was extinction, we still
would have no other alternative but to live till extinction occurs. What
I mean to say here is that the darkness of the potential outcome of Power and Modernity has to be balanced by the beauty of life itself.
We have no other valid choice but to live… so why not live as happily
as we can by offering our thoughts and actions as gifts to the others
around us. I see the predicament of living with this knowledge as the
best of reasons to definitively abandon “taking” behaviors in favor of “giving” behaviors.

During the last five to ten Milena power societies have imposed “taking economies” on all of us and the result has been a few thousand years of misery for “we the people”. Why should we not try to practice the “gift economies”
that were the way non-power tribal societies produced their
inter-personal exchanges? What can we lose? For sure we would lose the
ideology of power but who is going to miss power? In return we would
definitely gain the tribal happiness of living in abundance that was the
“primitives” life condition. Who is going to object to that9?

I repeat again.

What
the future has in store for humanity is not a given. There can be no
absolute certainty about the outcome before it has been substantiated as
reality. Aliens, or god, could eventually free us from our hubris ; is
it not? But putting all speculation aside the fact is that the contours
of the future are definitely being sketched in the context forming in
the present. What this means is that the alternatives, which are gaining their substance in the context forming in the present, leave us the possibility to mold the scenarios at work within the probabilistic process that leads to the outcome of the future. In other words, whatever the darkness we detect, by dressing our dreams and visions of the future in the beauty radiating from life we engage in a scenario that could make beauty come true. This Book 3 is conceived as a narrative about such kinds of scenarios. By living, our dreams and ideals of the future, in the present we are weighing on the probabilistic selection of the future outcome that is most favorable to our species and as such I believe that dreaming has become the highest moral imperative of Late-Modernity.

Writing is an exercise at making sense, in my own mind, of my thinking about the present condition of humanity. And since the writing is there I share this exercise as a gift to whomever might be interested to read. I have nevertheless come to terms with the fact that in the age of Twitter very few of my readers will have taken the time to read through the entirety of my posts in this series about the transition “from Modernity to After-Modernity”. I wrote these posts over the last 2 winters as an answer to a deeply felt urge for sense about what societal evolution and the arts are all about. I copy-pasted the content of these posts in book format. It now totals some 1350 pages… This testifies to the otherworldliness of my writing with the universe of Twitter that I just mentioned.These book-covers are an illustration of the organization of the content of my posts in book form:

In a first step I copy paste the content of my posts in a book template.

the
second step consists in completing the table of content which
eventually necessitates additional material to sustain a more coherent
presentation.

The third step is about formatting the existing text and the footnotes

the fourth step is the editing of the material in its final version.

Humanity’s presently forming context contains the potentiality of its future. This is the substance of the scenarios that I plan to narrate in this book. But, in light of my Twitter remark here above before plunging in such scenarios, I want to offer the reader a sketch refresher on the determinant factors, that are shaping the context emerging in the present, as I have been laying them out exhaustively in Book 1 and Book 210.
__________

Notes

1 Xieyi painting or “ink and wash painting” is called shui-mo in Chinese. I personally define it as “writing down the true meaning behind what is being observed by the eyes”. This school of painting is often referred to as "literati painting". It originated in the Tang Dynasty (618-906) and is one of the “four arts” that were practiced by the Chinese scholars or mandarins who were gentlemen educated to eventually officiate as the bureaucrats in charge of the decision making process within the state machinery of the Chinese empire. These 4 arts are – “guqin” which is a stringed musical instrument, – “qi” or the strategy of the game of “go”, – “shu“ or Chinese calligraphy, – “hua” or Xieyi painting. Having been educated to execute political decisions scholars were nevertheless not all active in the field. Some, referred to as “literati”, were indeed more interested in the solitude necessary to gain higher levels of personal erudition, and to express this erudition, than in the mundane world of power.

2 flame-sovereigns:
the Chinese classics, written sometime between 500 and 100 BC, most
often expound on the past of the Chinese nation and their depiction is
not always verified by archeology. For this reason the historical
narrative of the Classics has been described as mythical by “well-intentioned”
Westerners. But more extensive digging and discoveries give them
nevertheless credit for an exact depiction of earlier periods that were
thought to be mythical until then. So it might well be that future
discoveries will give them further credit. To this day archeology has
confirmed the narrative of the Classics going back somewhere around 1600
BC. What comes before remains thus labeled as China’s mythical history.
That mythical history gives one more dynasty, the Xia, starting
sometime around 2200 to 2000 BC. and what comes before the Xia it
describes as the unification of China by “3 Sovereigns and 5 emperors”.
The 3 Sovereigns are – Fushi, – Nuwa, – Shennong. In the History
Classics Shennong is presented not as one sovereign but as a line of
sovereigns who were also called Flames or Flame Sovereigns. Depending on
the work one consults the Flames are seen lasting some 500 to 16000
years. In “Book 2. Volume 4. Governance and societal evolution” I propose the following:

Fushi was the model of governance that was active during the “band societal era” that preceded tribal societies

Nuwa was the matriarchal, non-power, mode of governance of the “tribal societal era” that precedes power societies

the Flames were the “master-men of knowledge” (see Book 2. Volume 1) also called “YanDi”
who, starting with the emergence of agriculture, acted as the symbol of
unity over culturally unifying tribes and later villages that shared
common animistic forms in the context of an ever expanding territory.
The Flames were thus the real initiators of the theory of sovereignty
that was popularized later during the Zhou empire under the concept of “TianXia”

3 See “From Modernity to After-Modernity”, Book 4. “Governance and Societal Evolution”.

4 See “From Modernity to After-Modernity”, Book 4. “Sovernance and Societal Evolution”.
To my knowledge the Chinese empire is the only and unique power society
that preserved animism as its worldview. The “master-men of knowledge”,
also known as flames or Flame-Sovereigns or Yan Di or Shennon, acted as
the symbols of unity in the spread of their own tribe’s animistic
culture. And so the spread of the culture of their own tribe over an
expanding territory was unifying an increasing number of people behind a
common form of tribal culture a process that has been called called
Tian Xia or all under heaven. Once inequality started to set in around
3000 BC some “master-man of knowledge” gradually initiated
more and more traits that are typical of the men of power and by 2000
BC, after Yu the Great had initiated the transfer of his power to his
descendants, the first Chinese dynasty arose under the name Xia. This institutionalization of the empire led to a restructuring of the traditional role of the animist man of knowledgeand his diverse functions were split into specialized spheres of activity:

the
traditional retreats of the men of knowledge under the aegis of the
master-shaman passed under the direct control of the emperor and were
institutionalized as something akin to a council of ministers in charge
of conceiving and implementing the politics of the empire.

knowledge
formation and the execution of all political decisions became the
specialty of the scholars. A very tiny bunch of them inherited the
lucidity of the master-shaman who transformed the animist knowledge by
adapting it to the context of the empire. The most famous among them are
undoubtedly Laozi and Kunzi (LaoTze & Confucius).

health concerns were attributed to the men of medicine whose works gave rise to Traditional Chinese Medicine or TCM,

divination was attributed to a specialized office inside the imperial bureaucracy,

the
communication with the spirit of the universe was attributed to the Wu
Shaman who, the emperors’ individualism willing, was now also put in
charge of the communication with the ancestors of the men of power.

5 “From Modernity to After-Modernity”, Book One, history, and Book two, theory , are
essays at understanding the process of societal evolution. I observe 4
eras in societal evolution. Here is a rough sketch of these eras:

first: bands of individuals, trying to survive under the domination of an alpha-male, were the societal norm for millions of years,

second: non-power tribal societies
living in economic affluence and in harmony with nature, were the norm
starting somewhere between 150,000 and 70,000 years ago and lasted to
sometime between 15,000 and 8,000 years ago. The traditional form of
governance of these tribes that survived later were constantly
threatened by the assimilation of elements of governance or of life from
more advanced neighboring societies,

third: power societies initiated social inequality and human material and spiritual suffering which called for the cult of the men of power in order to be justified something that led them to perceive themselves as being exceptional beings.

fourth: Modernity and total abdication of the mind to the mechanical principle of the reason at work within capital and later to rationalism.

Modernity consecrates individualism and the ego + private property +
the reason of capital and philosophic rationalism which separated the
traditional unity within the man of knowledge represented by – knowledge
– societal worldviews – the arts. During that separation the role of
the man of knowledge was opportunistically transferred to the scientist.
And following the demise of the men of knowledge big capital holders
and their lackeys never rested trying to destroy any remnants of past
holistic narratives that were meant to glue societies into cohesive
wholes. In the end the traditional function of the arts was captured by
finance and made to serve merchandization. In this process substantial
content became a danger and formalism was thus consecrated as the only
acceptable substance of art. But as some thinkers soon observed this
killed the traditional function of the arts. Formalism was indeed no
match to illustrate the substance of a worldview in the present.
In conclusion, my thesis is that, Late-Modernity is characterized by –
the disappearance of the men of knowledge, – the loss of worldviews and
rising anxiety, – the death of the function of the arts, – the
simultaneous convergence of Modernity’s multiple side-effects, –
societal atomization transforming the individuals in zombies, –
vanishing societal cohesion and dieing societies, – societal inability to shape future desirable outcomes. I’ll come back on this process in greater detail further down.

6 The argument I defend here parallels Dmitry Orlov’s concept of “technosphere”. “Dmitry
Orlov postulates the existence of something called the technosphere,
analogous to the biosphere, which came into existence as soon as human
inventions started transforming the natural world. This artificial
construct appears not to embrace life as we know it, nor does it have
any affinity for thehuman species, beyond what can be manipulated into the technosphere’s service!” A citation from Global Research’s article and interview about Dmitry’s book “Shrinking the Technosphere”.

7 In “Book 2. Volume 4. Governance and Societal Evolution”
I developed the idea that all human actions, individual and societal,
are eventually confronted to the ultimate systemic reality of our
universe wherein life’s complexity plays such a decisive role. By this I
mean that all actions, that do not fit within the constrains encoded in the systemic reality ofour universe and the application of life which is running on its operating system, will eventually be eliminated one day...
The foundational idea here is that the whole (Universe) is prime and
all its parts are fitting within the constrains imposed by its
applications. Those parts or particles that take liberties with these
constrains are doomed to be eliminated. It is in that sense that we
understand why living species act strategically to ensure their own
reproduction over time. The species and their individual particles act like the polarities of the entity represented by life.
To maximize the chances to balance these polarities life uses societies
as strategic mechanisms in charge of keeping species and individuals on
a “middle of the road path”. The strategy of life is indeed
the avoidance by species of any danger of falling in the abyss that
invariably results in extinction. The danger of falling in the abyss is
understood to be located at the extremities of the line represented by
the opposite polarities of any entity and so life entrusts societies to
guide species and their individual particles on a “middle of the road path” far from the danger of extinction.

8 Keeping
one’s head under the sand is one way to avoid the stench of societal
behaviors in times of crisis. But it does nothing to solve the crisis
that is responsible for the rotting of societal culture. Seen the
predicament which humanity is facing in Late-Modernity it is highly
irresponsible to continue keeping one’s head under the sand. This is no
time for political correctness any longer. Thinking individuals have the
responsibility to speak out and act accordingly. There is no denying
the responsibility of science in our current predicament. But this does
not mean that we have to burn science. The least we should be trying to
do now is to understand where the whole thing went wrong and draw
conclusions that could help clarify the path of societies into the
future. Having participated in the creation of the mess of power and of
Modernity we owe future generations some explanations...

9
Anthropology is a science that emerged in Europe during the 19th
century. The context of its emergence was the colonial reality that
Europe had been imposing on the rest of the world over the last
centuries and continued to impose at the time. So from its onset the
context in which it emerged imposed on anthropology to be an ideological
presentation of the other people of the earth that was meant to justify
Europe’s behavior towards them. Christian morality was indeed starting
to question and reject some of its practices like slavery for example.
The ideological views developed in the 19th century largely prevailed
till sometime after the second world war when a younger generation of
anthropologists started to require the application of the scientific
method in their approach of tribal life. As a result their views were so
flagrantly contradicting anthropological traditional certainties that
it took them decades to be heard and their following to grow. Today the vision of tribal life, that finally imposed itself, is one of non-power societies that lived in economic abundance while respecting nature.
But be adviced that some very vocal opposition to today’s majority view
is still trying to claim the old ideological truisms which is
unfortunately shedding confusion in the minds...